Lectures: Should they be Dialogue, Monologue or Soliloquy?

Serendipity perhaps. Yesterday I found myself looking at an article by James Davies  (2006), ‘Dialogue, Monologue and Soliloquy in the Large Lecture Class’, International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 19 (2) 178-182) which wonderfully articulates the difference between large class teaching delivered for, and to, an audience and the ruminations of a speaker in their own world on stage. Last night on the BBC Magazine website there was then a wonderful 4 minute clip of actor/director Samuel West describing the different manner in which Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy from Hamlet “To Be or Not to Be….” might be performed. The two sit beautifully together as a little staff development package for academics, and I for one intend to use them that way!

VoiceThread and evolving communication

How is VoiceThread changing our ideas about communication?

Kevin Burden and I gave a short paper at ASCILITE in Melbourne Dec08 called “Evaluating Pedagogical ‘Affordances’ of Media Sharing Web 2.0 Technologies: a case study”. In the paper, we looked particularly at how the DiAL-e Framework might be used to explore the opportunities of a particular tool, in this case, Voicethread. Off the back of that, we began to get rather interested in how the various Web 2.0 technologies are actually changing the way people think about communication. We’re writing that up now and part of the process is to use the tool to talk about the tool! So Kevin has created a VoiceThread called “How is VoiceThread changing our ideas about communication? “

A VoiceThread is an online media album that allows a group of people to make comments on images, videos, and documents, really simply. You can participate 5 different ways – using your voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, an audio file, or video (with a webcam). It’s easy to control who can access and comment on a VoiceThread, which makes it a secure place to talk about almost anything: business and academic presentations, travelogues, family history, art critiques, language study, tutorials, book clubs and digital storytelling. A VoiceThread allows an entire group conversation to be collected from anywhere in the world and then shared in one simple place.

So here’s our invitation to a dialogue ! How is VoiceThread changing our ideas about communication?

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